The reverse of that post I’ve made a week ago…

Rules: pick one movie or series and explain why you actually enjoyed it despite the criticism.

For me: The JJ Abrams Star Trek movies, by far the best ST stuff ever made, I couldn’t take seriously the original universe with the dated effects and stiff acting, same goes for NG… These movies did ST actually great looking and much more believable, not just the effects.

  • Jo Miran@lemmy.ml
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    6 months ago

    For me: The JJ Abrams Star Trek movies, by far the best ST stuff ever made, I couldn’t take seriously the original universe with the dated effects and stiff acting, same goes for NG… These movies did ST actually great looking and much more believable, not just the effects.

    Just kidding… but not really.

  • sgibson5150@slrpnk.net
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    6 months ago

    Me and about a dozen other people thought John Carter was great. To me, it was just a fun sci-fi/fantasy movie. Never undestood the hate.

  • Rekorse@sh.itjust.works
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    6 months ago

    The original super Mario bros movie from the 90s. If I come across it I always get the urge to watch it. Its so weird and interesting, love it. Noone in my family will watch it though they hate it :(

    • TVA@thebrainbin.org
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      6 months ago

      This is mine too. If you haven’t, look up the drama on set! The crew wore shirts stating they hate the directors, the actors were drunk, Haskins broke his leg and was in a cast most of the time (rumored to have been run over on set by another drunk actor, lol).

      It’s insane and crazy that we got a movie so fun (seriously, it’s just so fun even if it doesn’t adhere to the source material).

  • FeelzGoodMan420@eviltoast.org
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    6 months ago

    A million ways to die in the west is a solid dumb comedy. The movie has dogshit reviews on every review site but I enjoyed it.

  • AdolfSchmitler@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Wild Wild West has a 16% on Rotten Tomatoes but I genuinely enjoy that film. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen also at 16% and also a movie I enjoyed

    • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      League of Extraordinary Gentlemen aka How audiences unjustly bullied Sean Connery out of acting.

      • AA5B@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Wait, really? That was an excellent movie. I wanted them to build a franchise around it

        • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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          6 months ago

          Indeed.

          Sean Connery’s agent had scored him the roles of Gandalf for Lord of the Rings and Morpheus in The Matrix, but turned them down due to feeling the plot was too complicated for audiences to follow. After both of these became money-printing machines, he picked League of Extraordinary Gentlemen despite still having problems with the script believing it would be as big as the other two films and that he wasn’t going to miss out on a solid payday three times in a row…

          League of Extraordinary Gentlemen would go on to be a box office bomb, and Sean Connery felt he was too “out of touch” with modern audiences to be an actor.

          There is good news though, if you want more from the franchise you’re in luck. As the movie itself was based off of a comic book which has pretty much the same plot.

          The only difference is the movie added “Tom Sawyer” to the group, he isn’t in the comic book and had been requested by executives so that there was a token American in the group, fearing audiences wouldn’t be able to relate without a member from the good ol’ US of A.

          • AA5B@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            Tom did seem kind of tacked on there, rather than fitting with the rest. But of course the executives were right, my American pride liked the symbolism of the ending

    • Hadriscus@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      No way ! WWW is a treasured childhood memory of mine, this rotten tomato guy can suck ass

  • Sickday@kbin.earth
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    6 months ago

    You asked for one, but I’ve got two hills to die on, sorry.

    1. Solo: A Star Wars Story was a lot of fun and I thought it was a solid entry. I didn’t really like the Sequels or Prequels, but Rogue One and Solo both stuck out as good titles to me.

    2. Lightyear was a good movie. I really enjoyed it and didn’t really understand why it got so much flak.

  • yessikg@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    6 months ago

    So many movies but let’s go with: Ghostbusters 2016. I had an absolute blast watching it and Chris played one of the best himbos of all time

    • ReCursing@lemmings.world
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      6 months ago

      My only real problem with it is that despite being all-woman led, it fails to be a feminist movie because Chris Hemsworth steals every scene he is in! Other than that it was fine. Not great but watchable

  • TheBrideWoreCrimson@sopuli.xyz
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    6 months ago

    Matrix 2 & 3. I don’t see, or watch, them as separate movies. Rather, together with Matrix 1, they form one big masterpiece for me. But I can see that it doesn’t really fit the 100 minutes format audiences came to expect, and breaking it in three parts did not do it any good. Plus, I guess I’m just a fan of long movies as I’ve also sat through the original, restored “Until the End of the World,” which runs for about 5 hours.

    • Hadriscus@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      Yea I’m with you on this. They expand on an otherwise superb unit in a rather intricate way, bringing in so much lore and characters, complexifying the stakes, that I can see how they can be perceived as diluting a very pure work of art, and losing the beautiful esoterism of the first. But it’s two of those films you need to watch several times to wrap your head around and appreciate rightfully. Just like The Big Lebowski, in a different way

    • djsoren19@yiffit.net
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      6 months ago

      I mean, 2 and 3 are also largely a deconstruction of 1. The Matrix is an incredibly well made movie with really stupid themes. 2 and 3 do an excellent job highlighting why stuff like “Neo is the Chosen One” is fundamentally bad storytelling, but there were a lot of audiences who loved The Matrix fully and completely. I can understand why those people were disappointed when 2 and 3 weren’t just more senseless violence in black trenchcoats, but ultimately the series wasn’t made for them.

      IIRC, 2 and 3 were meant to be one film, but it got split due to studio meddling. I wonder if there is a mega-cut adapting the whole trilogy into a single runtime.

    • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      Matrix 2 and 3 were films that always got a bad rep, but were alright if you sat down and watched them.

      Matrix 4 is… best left forgotten, and I say that as someone who likes Indy 4

  • smokebuddy [he/him]@lemmy.today
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    6 months ago

    I really like Wild Wild West, I didn’t watch it for forever because of how hated it is/was but thought it was actually funny and enjoyed the mix of steampunk and goofyness. Kevin Kline is always great.

    I also like Jingle All the Way and watch it every few years, it’s perfectly watchable until the very end when it collapses under a terrible CGI spectacle that just doesn’t work

    • y0kai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      6 months ago

      I loved Will Wild West. It was just over hyped when it came out and the theme song got old fast. Other than that it was actually a solid movie.

    • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
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      6 months ago

      Fun fact:

      Will Smith was the first actor approached by the Wachowskis to be Neo in the Matrix.

      He turned it down to work on Wild Wild West, and the role of Neo went to Keanu.

  • iii@mander.xyz
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    6 months ago

    The latest matrix. I liked it for the critique that it is.

    • Acamon@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Yeah, I wasn’t that excited about the idea of sequel in the first place, mostly because I didn’t think there was much point to one. So when I saw Resurrections I was actually pleasantly surprised, and genuinely enjoyed the different tone and lamposting of the dumbness of unnecessary sequels.

    • burgersc12@mander.xyz
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      6 months ago

      The parts where its clear they were forced to make the video game movie or someone else would is great. The rest is… not good imo. Neo uses the force push every 30 seconds and solves all of his problems.

  • pixelscript@lemm.ee
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    6 months ago

    I love The Polar Express.

    The most widely hated thing about it is the mocap. Not much to say here, I’m just straight-up not bothered by it. I think it looks fine. It’s not incredibly expressive like a stylized animated film could be, but it doesn’t look actively bad to me in any way.

    The way the titular express inexplicably gains and loses rolling stock scene by scene and behaves in absurd ways like bending around the mountain are a common punchline. “BuT iT’s A mAgIc TrAiN!!!” doesn’t really solve it for me either. But on a casual viewing it’s mostly inoffensive. A silly curiosity.

    Some say the plot of the film spends too much time aimlessly noodling around and throwing in needless filler scenes. Meh. If you ask me that’s where all the meat of the film is. The actual plot of the film has nothing interesting to say. “Kid doesn’t believe in Santa. Magic Christmas hijinks ensue. Kid believes in Santa now. The end.” Riveting. Nah, the so-called “filler” is absolutely the meal here.

    The fact that the film literally has five named characters, and the main character isn’t one of them is hilarious. To even get to that number you have to count both the Scrooge puppet and the kid who the elves were monitoring in a single scene as characters, and after that, one of the remaining three is Santa Claus. Just more weight to my point that the story doesn’t matter, lmao.

    Say what you will about the animation, but the cinematography is incredible. So many dynamic long-track camera shots from interesting angles. Especially whenever the steam locomotive is on screen. God, steam locomotives are so fucking cool. I don’t even care that it’s full of inaccuracies if you actually look up close. They put a lot of effort into it and that effort shows. It’s quite the treat.

    The set design of the North Pole is fantastic. It’s admittedly kinda fucked that it’s modeled after a real world Pullman company town, but I guess it’s appropriate as a joke about the whole Santa’s workshop thing while also incorporating a neat little nod to real life railroad lore. Beyond that, it’s blindingly radiant of all that Victorian-era charm that most of the modern secular Christmas tradition is born from. The serene night snow amidst the rustic red brickwork illuminated by glowing amber gaslamps… augh, it’s so aggressively cozy!

    All the pneumatic and other steampunk-adjacent elf tech is a treat as well. The film is certainly no slouch in breathing its own unique spin of whimsy into Santa’s toy factory. It’s not the most whimsical out there, but it’s definitely putting in work.

    Alan Silvestri’s score is phenomenal. It’s all delightfully extra. Every single song in the film that’s an original composition is a banger and every song that isn’t an original composition for the film is part of that time-tested canon of hits from the 50s and 60s. I think a lot of people are fed up sick of the latter but, I dunno, I grew up listening to them on my Now That’s What I Call Christmas CD, and to me their sound is synonymous with that warm, nostalgic holiday cheer I get from the season. Even if I don’t get around to actually watching the movie, you know damn well I’m putting The Polar Express’s soundtrack in my December shuffle.

    Genuine S tier Christmas film. Well worth every single fault.

  • Gerudo@lemm.ee
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    6 months ago

    Lady in the Water by M. Night. I think its an amazingly crafted fairy tale.

    • simple@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      Upvoting you out of sheer respect, but wow I can’t believe there is someone out there that enjoyed that hot garbage.

      • Gerudo@lemm.ee
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        6 months ago

        Oh I get shit on for it all the time if I mention it. I stand by it lol.

    • statler_waldorf@sopuli.xyz
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      6 months ago

      I cannot remember a single thing about the movie except that I recall loving the way in which the story was told but hating the story itself.

    • yessikg@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      6 months ago

      The marketing really fucked up the movie. I also really liked it but I watched after looking up what it was actually about

  • kubok@fedia.io
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    6 months ago

    The mid-2000s A-Team movie comes to mind. It was terrible. The casting was off and there was no real plot to speak of. However, it was so much over the top that it turned pretty funny actually. I probably won’t be watching it a second time though.

    • dukeofdummies@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Murdoch was dead on. I thought face was pretty good. Liam did a decent Hannibal and BA was fine.

      What irked me was this weird back story of like… trying to let face taking over to lead the group sort of thing, plus the romance. It really rubbed me the wrong way.

      Like, the A team isn’t some club, they’re this perfect storm of chaos towards bad guys, there isn’t so much a hierarchy as just this inexplicable plot armor and audacity. If it wasn’t all four it would all fall apart.

        • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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          6 months ago

          Mythbusters covered it, and said that everything in that scene was within the realm of possibility.

          I think they were bribed by Jessica Beil’s thighs

    • TedZanzibar@feddit.uk
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      6 months ago

      Man I’d forgotten about that film but I also really enjoyed it. It was fully self aware and made no attempt to take itself seriously, and if you’re in the right mindset for that then it’s a great time.

      Might have to watch it again.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      6 months ago

      I don’t think that’s a particularly hot take. Pretty much everyone thinks that it was good with the minor exception of for a the actors.

    • lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com
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      6 months ago

      I don’t get the fuss about the leads, either. Came in with no preconceptions & thought it was fine. 🤷